Attachment theory is on the leading edge of a conceptual revolution. It offers a new paradigm that can synthesize into a more coherent whole the best ideas from psychoanalysis, cognitive science, and neurobiology. With its emphasis on relationships, attachment theory is determinedly humanistic, while retaining the scientific vigor of Darwinian ethnology. Attachment theory provides an overall framework for thinking about relationships, or more accurately, about those aspects of relationships that are shaped by threat and the need for security, themes that are central to the work of psychotherapy. In this book Jeremy Holmes explores the contribution of attachment theory to everyday psycho-therapeutic practice where patients are usually seen once weekly, or less, for no more than two to three years.

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More About the Author

I'm a retired UK National Health Service Consultant Psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I now work in private practice seeing patients once a week, and am visiting Professor at the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter, where we set up a psychoanalytic psychotherapy Masters and now Doctoral programme, combining academic with professional training in psychoanalytic work, especially for those working in the public sector. I live on a farm in beautiful North Devon --in the middle of nowhere! In some ways that cuts me off from the mainstream of psychoanalytic and psychiatric life -- but it also enables me to develop my own ideas and to get an overview of the field, which is sometimes harder when is in the thick of things. My main interest has been in Attachment Theory and I continue to follow the Attachment literature and in my writing to bring Attachment ideas to bear on psychoanalytic thinking and practice. Working part-time means that I can go to my desk most mornings for an hour or two where I try to read and write, before attending to the garden, family life with my wife, the garden, music, running, and learning Spanish (our grandson lives in Peru).A recent book, Exploring In Security, is an example of this -- it is also a rather personal book trying to encapsulate some of the things I've learned about the day to day practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I wrote it by melding together material from a daily diary -- a sort of primitive blog -- with lectures and papers I've delivered over the past ten years or so, since my previous single-author book, The Search for the Secure Base.Recently I've written quite a few papers for academic journals, usually arising out of lectures -- on The Superego, The place of Theory n Psychoanalytic work, Integrative approaches to Psychoanalysis, and Relational Psychoanalysis. I am currently interested in the topic of Intimacy, and I suspect my next book will explore that theme.I've won a couple of awards recently: in 2009 I was awarded the New York Bowlby-Ainsworth award for contributions to Attachment Theory. In 2010 Exploring In Security: Towards an Attachment-informed Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy won the Canadian Psychological Association Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy Goethe award for the best book of the year.2012 sees my radical re-write of Anthony Storr's classic The Art of Psychotherapy (Taylor & Francis), a practical guide to the business of trying to help troubled people with psychotherapy. For publication 2013: with my friend and colleague Arietta Slade I am compiling a 6 volume collection of the 120 best Attachment papers since Bowlby began the whole Attachment movement (SAGE); I am updating John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Routledge), which was written 25 years ago; The Therapeutic Imagination: using Literature to deepen Psychotherapeutic Understanding (Routledge) shows how great literature can help us as psychotherapists with its prototypical characters and capacity to capture the essence of what it is to be human. Projects for the future include Selected Papers, and a new book looking at psychic change and how psychotherapy helps to to acheive it.

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Review

Jeremy Holmes is the most significant contemporary theorist currently using attachment theory as a basis for psychotherapeutic practice. In this book he develops and amplifies Bowlby's original ideas by linking them to current work in child development and psychotherapy. In a crucial distinction, he shows that attachment and intimacy refer to different forms of relating which are developmentally connected, the form of attachment shaping the later style of intimate behavior. This maturation is related to the capacity for narrative. -- Russell Meares Holmes not only gives clinicians a fundamental understanding of attachment theory but demonstrates its applicability to everyday practice concerns. By describing the characteristics of avoidant and ambivalent attachment, he helps therapists understand more fully the difficulties that patients have in achieving, maintaining, and thriving within a secure base. -- Karen B. Walant Attachment theory has finally come into its own in the clinical setting. The conceptual framework provided by Bowlby, Ainsworth, and their successors has wide psychotherapeutic applications that are brilliantly described in this impressive work by Jeremy Holmes. Much that is chaotic in the clinical setting becomes clear and understandable when the principles of attachment theory are brought to bear. To the reader's great good fortune, Holmes's prose style is a model of clarity so that abstruse concepts are effortlessly grasped by the reader and the author's humanity shines through. -- Glen O. Gabbard

About the Author

Jeremy Holmes, MD, MRCP, FRCPsych, is currently a senior clinical lecturer at Bristol University Medical School. Dr. Holmes lectures widely in the UK and internationally, and has published seven books and over sixty papers on psychotherapy.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This book is clear, interesting and above all informative. It throws New light on issues of attachment which are crucial in our work. I loved Holmes' honesty about difficulties in the work an mistakes he made and how he learnt from them.